The Most Challenging Seasonal Period in this Generation of UK Retailers

As we head towards the last trading Saturday before the festive season truly gets underway, consumers in the UK are poised to spend a staggering £1.65bn in just one day. In-store spending on food, drink and gifts will amount to £1.38bn whilst last minute online shopping is expected to reach £268m. Put this into context, that is £2.38 million per minute, according to research by VoucherCodes and the Centre for Retail Research.

The seasonal period has always been critical to the success of any retailer and the 8 weeks of peak trading from Black Friday through to Christmas can for some retailers be where approximately 1/3 of their annual sales are achieved.

Which is why with some much outside influences impacting the industry, it is set to be the most challenging period in this generation of retailers. Although not everything can be blamed on Brexit, it does hang over the retail economy like a vast black cloud which in turn means you cannot ignore that the UK consumer finds themselves uncertain of the future and one area where they can take back control is their disposal spend. Richard Hyman a Veteran retail analyst commented recently in the Retail Week report “The majority of the British public are influenced by their own economic circumstances but the sheer intensity of the Brexit debate has made people more conscious of it.”

With data being the foundation of the new retail economy, the 'shelf stacker' use to be the poster child for the industry, now it is the ‘data analyst’ who will play a significant role in winning or losing customers spend and beating the competition. Therefore, Qlik is part of an initiative to drive Data Literacy into the workforce so that everyone inside the retail organisation is empowered to having full confidence to read, work with, analyse and argue with data.

And whilst having the right product assortment to attract the customer, multiple channels to go to market and an operational model to sell goods is the baseline for any retailer; deploying the right analytical platform behind the front line is where the battle going forward will determine who won or lost.